Over 550 movie musicals were produced during the 1940s, quite an accomplishment for a country caught in the turmoil of World War II. Through revealing interviews and dozens of clips, these two episodes rediscover a golden ... more &raquoage of the movies. MGM emerged as the leader in musical entertainment with producers like Arthur Freed and directors like Vincente Minnelli and Stanley Donen putting a unique stamp of distinction upon their works. Highlights of this 2-part program include: A young Frank Sinatra creates a furor among bobbysoxers, pin-up girls like Betty Grable, Rita Hayworth, Betty Hutton and June Haver remind the boys overseas what they were fighting for, musical acts like The Andrews Sisters and The Jivin? Jacks & Jills boost morale with their jam sessions and jitterbugging, Bing Crosby and Bob Hope hit the road with a series of musical-comedy confections and Hollywood experiments with bringing black performers like Lena Horne to main screen fare in such films as Stormy Weather and Cabin in the Sky.&laquo less

Movie Reviews

A LOPSIDED PRESENTATION

Harold Jacobs | North Hollywood, CA USA | 09/01/2009

(3 out of 5 stars)

"We watched HOLLYWOOD SINGING AND DANCING - The 1930s - and thoroughly enjoyed it. The presentation is very interesting, and they even included rare footage of a talented but sadly-neglected JANE WITHERS, who was a top box-office star in the late thirties. So, we thought, let's get HOLLYWOOD SINGING AND DANCING - the 1940s. How can we go wrong with so many top musical stars and TECHNICOLOR to boot? Our high hopes were soon dashed upon viewing it. They should have entitled it JUDY GARLAND AND THE MGM MUSICALS. I lived through the decade of the forties, and Judy Garland did NOT dominate the Hollywood musical the way it is presented here. ALICE FAYE, DEANNA DURBIN, BETTY GRABLE, RITA HAYWORTH, CARMEN MIRANDA and others are dismally represented here. JANE POWELL, who has been quoted as saying "there were other musical stars at MGM besides Judy Garland and Gene Kelly," is barely mentioned; and DOROTHY LAMOUR is totally ignored, although Bing Crosby and Bob Hope and the ROAD pictures are discussed.

It's ironic that 20th Century-Fox, known for its superior color and sound, is represented here with footage of such poor quality and color. The Fox clips used would undoubtedly scare away a potential customer who would buy their films on DVD. Carmen Miranda in black and white? Betty Grable in a lesser performance in black and white? Alice Faye in a brief scene from "That Night in Rio" with such faded color that it's hard to recognize her? The producers of this package evidently had good access to the MGM library, but it's my guess that Fox would not cooperate - thus this inferior representation of its films and stars. Consequently, faded trailer footage was probably used.

The forties had such a wonderful array of beautiful, talented musical stars, and all of the ones I mentioned above, plus many more, were box-office favorites.

After viewing this lopsided presentation, a younger person would not get an accurate impression of what the Hollywood musical was really like during the decade of the forties."

"I absolutely love musicals from the 1930s and 1940s so I bought this DVD on faith that there would be something on it that I either hadn't seen before or something that was a clip of a film that wasn't available on VHS or DVD. This is basically a collection of clips from films that have fallen in to public domain and a variety of public domain trailers. It is billed as "A Musical History" so you would think that there would be a documentary style structure when, in fact, it is a hodge-podge of clips we (who like this type of film) have seen before. At one point I was considering buying the other volumes but now I doubt it. This would be an okay addition to a public library collection as reference but, if you are a devotee to musicals of this era, I would skip it."